I Think I've Been Hacked, Need Some Advice From the Pros!

My roommate is pretty computer savvy and says that I've most likely been hacked and have a key-logger. He won't have time to work on my computer until
this weekend, and was kind enough to lend me his spare laptop in the meantime (I would go stark raving mad going more than a day or two without
computer access). He says if he can't get into the Bios to turn off or change the password, he will have to completely wipe and reinstall it.

I guessing you have not ever bothered to make a password reset disk..

Your room mate might claim to be computer savvy but if he says that getting into the bios has anything to do with changing the windows password he
does not know what hes talking about.

The chances of a hacker getting into your computer and changing your password are very , very remote. There's no motive for a start, what would be the
point?

Most of the time this is caused by the caps lock being on or even a dodgy keyboard.

Thanks everyone for your input and suggestions (except for the one about putting my cat to sleep...lol) I'm copying this thread to show my roommate
and he will hopefully get me back up and running soon. I will post later once the issue is resolved and let you know how I made out. Thanks again,
fellow ATSers!

I see others have pointed you in the right direction as far as getting the password thing sorted out.
But I would highly suggest only using one AV program at a time, using more than one is counter productive. Each AV product quarantines and handles
things differently so having more that one may just end up moving your problem around your HD and not really handling it.
As far as what to pick I would recommend sticking with security essentials, nothing wrong with the other one but its just my recommendation. You visit
any AV forum and you will see than none are perfect, common sense is the best AV out there and honestly if you want a clean computer don't use it to
look at porn.

The most user-friendly versions of Linux that I know of are Ubuntu and Zorin OS. If you wanna try out Ubuntu without actually installing it, you can
try out something called Wubi. It's an application that allows you to install Ubuntu as a program rather than an operating system. Once you've
installed it, you'll be asked to reboot. You should get boot options of either Windows or Ubuntu. And of course choose Ubuntu. If you ever decide
Ubuntu isn't for you, just boot into Windows and remove it in Control Panel.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my thread for their advice and suggestions (except for the one to kill my cat...lol). Just wanted to provide a
belated update on my computer password dilemma; was never able to find out what happened to cause it, so I ended up having to completely wipe and
reinstall my OS.

With it, you would have been able to enable the hidden admin log-in account and reset your password without losing any data... but good thing you have
a "computer savvy" friend that helped you wipe everything.

could have just removed the cmos battery for around 25 mins and then reinserted it and powered up your pc that would have reset password to factory
settings, effectively it would have removed your login password.. without losing anything

Tap F8 while system is rebooting and try the option "Last Known Good Configuration" If that doesn't work then try "Safe Mode" option. If that
doesn't work then maybe you can go into the bios and reset the bios configurations to system default. It sounds like your keyboard is stuck imputing
something that it shouldn't. Other than this you would have to completely restore the system. However, you could save your user files system settings
if you knew someone savvy enough that has a linux distro to copy your user profile and back it up on a USB hard drive. Linux doesn't care about
windows security unless it is full disk encryption.

Or like others have said give the password cracking cd a try. I don't think it will work though as the hashed passwords security wise has been worked
on by Microsoft lately and changed them to not be so easily cracked with them types of tools and others like kon-boot. After a simple Microsoft
update, it pretty much killed all of those hacks. It's kind of pointless though to crack the password when with Linux I can copy anything I want in
bash after mounting the HD unless of course you have full disk encryption or something.

I suppose keeping a password recovery usb stick would be wise. However, you have to take into consideration those usb sticks can also die without
warning and you are back to square one again. It's good to keep a backup on USB and one on DVD or maybe a cloud drive after encrypting it. I lost
count how many times I had to help people with this sort of thing. Having a backup solution is a must and you should be thinking and taking it
seriously. Get a USB or network hard drive or make backups on DVD's by using software such as TrueImage to clone your HD partitions. There is lots
of software out there a lot for free. Microsoft has it built in, virus suites have it, Nero burner type software has it the list goes on and on.

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